O come my dear fellows, come hear the odd story
Of brave Sergeant Crowley and Professor Gates.
But who was the hunter and who was the quarry?
In this intriguing tale of their entwining fates.
Mr. Gates and a friend back from an overseas trip,
Weary no doubt from their long Trans-Atlantic,
Forced open the door with a bump of the hip
And were spied by a neighbor, alert though not frantic.
Her 911 call, now famously viral,
Had duly reported the facts of the case
And so, recorded for all, fed the media spiral
No concern about safety - it’s now about race.
“The intruders,” urged the dispatch “…black? white? Hispanic?”
“Hispanic…I think. Well, perhaps – I’m not sure.”
His voice reassuring, so as not to stoke panic
“A squad car’s responding…your street is secure.”
That poor woman’s words, now famously spoken
Alas, irreproachable, to the media’s vexation
Calmly delivered, clear and unbroken
Put the lie to Gates’ hasty racist summation
Did the dispatcher exercise racial profiling?
The Prof made that claim with the cops at his stoop
The Zip-ties, though, on his wrists were revealing
Perhaps the press, and the Prez, didn’t have the full scoop
So did our blue hero exercise diligent care,
Arresting the Professor for his black (though light) hue?
His rep on the force is he’s firm but he’s fair
Why then, pray tell, all this hullabaloo?
Then came Wednesday night, nation-wide on TV
The leader of the free world came on to opine
That the officers were at fault, it’s plain to see
“That cane-wielding professor is a good friend of mine!”
Borrowing a page from Rev. Wright’s book of lucidity
Scouring the city for someone to blame
Our fair President, moving with surprising rapidity
Fell into that tired old race-baiting game
Caught up in a moment of rhetorical cupidity
Looked up from his pulpit to shoot from the hip
Likened Crowley’s deeds to acts of stupidity
Shame on the guy for those words he let slip
“A teaching moment” the Prez now claims, with a wink
He obscured his comments but to the cops…a Bronx cheer!
Who’d have thought he could pull us back from the brink
With a nod and a wink and a cold mug of beer!
(Published July 29, 2009 by John Peery, all rights reserved)
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
Don Johnson is Christ! (A true story)
Don Johnson will tell you that he’s a terrifically skilled bricklayer and mason. He’s not bragging, mind you, he just wants you to know that as a skilled, in-demand laborer he is quite capable of earning a decent wage, paying his bills and living a life of respect. We’re standing on a brick sidewalk not far from a memorial “to our Confederate dead”, almost smack-dab between the fine Victorian mansions of the North Hill District and the soup kitchen where Don takes most of his meals.
Don tells me how fortunate he was that on the night he was jumped by two young thugs, robbed, beaten and abandoned, he was in the parking lot of the hospital that was to treat him. In town on a temporary bricklaying job, Don had only a small bag of clothes and toiletries, an old plastic paint bucket of tools, and a cell phone. He was robbed of all save the worn jeans and ragged T-shirt he was wearing as he told his story. Barely conscious, bleeding from a number of cuts on his swollen face, and mumbling incoherently through a jaw broken in two places, Don managed to drag himself to the hospital emergency room.
“After about a week they told me I could go home,” Don continued, “but I asked them ‘What about my jaw? Aren’t you going to wire my jaw?’” But his jaw was not to be wired. The thieves who robbed Don of his livelihood also robbed him of his wire-cutting pliers. “You have to have wire-cutters with you at all times when your jaw is wired,” Don explained matter-of-factly, “’cause if there’s an emergency you have to be able to cut the wire.”
The grandson of a prominent Southern lawyer and judge, Don Johnson will tell you the story of how when he was a boy he would go to visit his grandfather at the courthouse. The boy was impressed by the larger-than-life portrait of his grandfather hanging on the wall in the courtroom. He would sit with his grandfather the lawyer and judge and listen to stories of true crime and justice. The judge would ask the boy, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” “I want to be a lawyer just like you, Grandpa,” Don told him. But the judge cautioned the crestfallen boy away from the law. “I don’t want you to ever have to lie to earn your living” he told him.
“So that’s how I ended up as a bricklayer,” Don went on with his story, “’cause you work with your hands; you never have to talk to no one…you never have to lie.”
Don Johnson made a point of assuring me that he wasn’t THAT Don Johnson. I’m sure he meant the actor Don Johnson but I didn’t need much convincing to understand that the weathered, tired, sweaty man before me was not the same pastel day- glow Don Johnson of “Miami Vice” fame. He did offer to show me his ID, I’m supposing a driver’s license, but I took him at his word.
Together with his clothes and tools, Don also lost his cell phone. Stored in the phone were the numbers of the man for whom he had been working, now hopelessly out of touch, and Don’s brother in Tampa. Don doesn’t remember his brother’s number off the top of his head and for some reason he is unable to find him through directory assistance. A nice lady at the mission gave Don a sheet of notebook paper, a pen, and a stamped envelope so that he could write home to his brother.
Did he write the letter? I don’t know and I don’t ask; I don’t even think to ask. I’m thinking that at any moment in the Don Johnson saga I am going to be asked for money. I am just out for a morning walk with the baby in the stroller and the dog on a leash and minding my own business when Don Johnson stepped into my life. The whole time I am listening to his story I am scheming ways to get away from this homeless guy and get on with my walk. He’s a little bit scary and dirty and sweaty and he smells like booze even though he doesn’t seem to be drunk.
“I just want to shake your hand, sir” Don Johnson says to me as if we are wrapping this up. Okay, I’m bracing for it. Here it comes…the pitch, the whimper, the beggar's appeal…“God bless you and your beautiful baby,” he says with a warm smile, his blue eyes suddenly clear and full of joy and promise. “Huh?” I am taken aback. “Well, God bless you too Don,” I replied quietly, almost ashamedly. “Oh I am blessed, sir, Jesus Christ lives in me and as long as I have Christ I have nothing to ever worry about!” And with that Don Johnson wishes me a good day and makes his way on down the brick path. So that was it, I thought; Christ is with Don Johnson…Christ is IN Don Johnson.
In whom will I find Christ today?
Don tells me how fortunate he was that on the night he was jumped by two young thugs, robbed, beaten and abandoned, he was in the parking lot of the hospital that was to treat him. In town on a temporary bricklaying job, Don had only a small bag of clothes and toiletries, an old plastic paint bucket of tools, and a cell phone. He was robbed of all save the worn jeans and ragged T-shirt he was wearing as he told his story. Barely conscious, bleeding from a number of cuts on his swollen face, and mumbling incoherently through a jaw broken in two places, Don managed to drag himself to the hospital emergency room.
“After about a week they told me I could go home,” Don continued, “but I asked them ‘What about my jaw? Aren’t you going to wire my jaw?’” But his jaw was not to be wired. The thieves who robbed Don of his livelihood also robbed him of his wire-cutting pliers. “You have to have wire-cutters with you at all times when your jaw is wired,” Don explained matter-of-factly, “’cause if there’s an emergency you have to be able to cut the wire.”
The grandson of a prominent Southern lawyer and judge, Don Johnson will tell you the story of how when he was a boy he would go to visit his grandfather at the courthouse. The boy was impressed by the larger-than-life portrait of his grandfather hanging on the wall in the courtroom. He would sit with his grandfather the lawyer and judge and listen to stories of true crime and justice. The judge would ask the boy, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” “I want to be a lawyer just like you, Grandpa,” Don told him. But the judge cautioned the crestfallen boy away from the law. “I don’t want you to ever have to lie to earn your living” he told him.
“So that’s how I ended up as a bricklayer,” Don went on with his story, “’cause you work with your hands; you never have to talk to no one…you never have to lie.”
Don Johnson made a point of assuring me that he wasn’t THAT Don Johnson. I’m sure he meant the actor Don Johnson but I didn’t need much convincing to understand that the weathered, tired, sweaty man before me was not the same pastel day- glow Don Johnson of “Miami Vice” fame. He did offer to show me his ID, I’m supposing a driver’s license, but I took him at his word.
Together with his clothes and tools, Don also lost his cell phone. Stored in the phone were the numbers of the man for whom he had been working, now hopelessly out of touch, and Don’s brother in Tampa. Don doesn’t remember his brother’s number off the top of his head and for some reason he is unable to find him through directory assistance. A nice lady at the mission gave Don a sheet of notebook paper, a pen, and a stamped envelope so that he could write home to his brother.
Did he write the letter? I don’t know and I don’t ask; I don’t even think to ask. I’m thinking that at any moment in the Don Johnson saga I am going to be asked for money. I am just out for a morning walk with the baby in the stroller and the dog on a leash and minding my own business when Don Johnson stepped into my life. The whole time I am listening to his story I am scheming ways to get away from this homeless guy and get on with my walk. He’s a little bit scary and dirty and sweaty and he smells like booze even though he doesn’t seem to be drunk.
“I just want to shake your hand, sir” Don Johnson says to me as if we are wrapping this up. Okay, I’m bracing for it. Here it comes…the pitch, the whimper, the beggar's appeal…“God bless you and your beautiful baby,” he says with a warm smile, his blue eyes suddenly clear and full of joy and promise. “Huh?” I am taken aback. “Well, God bless you too Don,” I replied quietly, almost ashamedly. “Oh I am blessed, sir, Jesus Christ lives in me and as long as I have Christ I have nothing to ever worry about!” And with that Don Johnson wishes me a good day and makes his way on down the brick path. So that was it, I thought; Christ is with Don Johnson…Christ is IN Don Johnson.
In whom will I find Christ today?
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Time Keeps on Slippin'
“You can tell time, can’t you?” asks the late comic Richard Prior as he whoops up on his kids for their indifference to his parental concern. In his poignantly hilarious, if not a little controversial, manner Prior was mocking the contrast between the white, suburban, “Please pass the potatoes”, middle-class plain-ness and the jive-talkin’, jeri-curlin’ minstrelsy of poor urban black folk. As it turns out, many of those white suburban kids of privilege really can’t tell time.
In the public high school where I sometimes substituted, a student had to have a hall pass to go from the classroom to any other location during class period. The passes asked for the student’s name, date, destination, and time. At first, and largely as a matter of expedience, I asked the student the time. To my astonishment I learned that many kids – most of the kids - just could not tell the time. Seriously, I mean they could not look at the clock and TELL me the time. I don’t mean to imply that these kids are simply stupid…that would be an easy out. Yet, even when I made it super easy on them by just asking them to ball-park it, saying “Is it like a little before two o’clock?” or “Is it ABOUT ten thirty?” I was still met with blank looks. How could this be? Are these kids that inept? That lazy? I was prepared to concede and just say yes but then I got to thinking about it.
Since when do kids really need to know what time it is? Their moms wake them up in the morning. The ubiquitous school bell (not really a bell anymore but more of a synthesized clanging one might associate with a diving submarine) keeps them moving throughout the school day with nary a twist of the neck to check out the also ubiquitous clock. In fact, the clocks were regarded more with bemused curiosity, like an Aztec trinket or a shark’s tooth, than as a relevant tool of good order and discipline. One day, in response to my befuddlement at three different showings on three different clocks all within ten feet of each other, a math teacher explained to me that she just “listens for the bell!”
Most school-age kids don’t have jobs and so, consequently, have little need to be “on time” for it. Even favorite TV shows that parents remember as being on such and such day at such and such time (remember “Hawaii Five-O” at 10pm EST Wednesdays?) no longer require time-keeping. Kids can download and watch their shows on their PCs, iPods, TiVos or any of a dozen other such gizmos. Kids DON’T need to know what time it is!
Even as adults, the need for good time-telling skills is on the wane. Once heavily scheduled, parents and worker bees are doing more of their errands and tasks on line or over the phone, or more and more, not at all! Now it seems less and less important to be anywhere on time since nobody seems to know what time it is anyway. During the time I lived in Spain I marveled at how anything was ever accomplished in that country given the Spaniard’s less than punctilious devotion to the clock. But at least I knew the reason for their ways; sun-soaked afternoons, warm breezes, good cheap red wine…they genuinely had nothing to do and no where to go and genuinely had no need for time-keeping.
Americans don’t “pass the potatoes” anymore because they don’t sit down together at the dinner table anymore thus rendering dinner “time” irrelevant. I can’t help feeling a little sad and disappointed that a skill as rudimentary as telling time could fall into such neglect.
“You can tell time, can’t you?” asks the late comic Richard Prior as he whoops up on his kids for their indifference to his parental concern. In his poignantly hilarious, if not a little controversial, manner Prior was mocking the contrast between the white, suburban, “Please pass the potatoes”, middle-class plain-ness and the jive-talkin’, jeri-curlin’ minstrelsy of poor urban black folk. As it turns out, many of those white suburban kids of privilege really can’t tell time.
In the public high school where I sometimes substituted, a student had to have a hall pass to go from the classroom to any other location during class period. The passes asked for the student’s name, date, destination, and time. At first, and largely as a matter of expedience, I asked the student the time. To my astonishment I learned that many kids – most of the kids - just could not tell the time. Seriously, I mean they could not look at the clock and TELL me the time. I don’t mean to imply that these kids are simply stupid…that would be an easy out. Yet, even when I made it super easy on them by just asking them to ball-park it, saying “Is it like a little before two o’clock?” or “Is it ABOUT ten thirty?” I was still met with blank looks. How could this be? Are these kids that inept? That lazy? I was prepared to concede and just say yes but then I got to thinking about it.
Since when do kids really need to know what time it is? Their moms wake them up in the morning. The ubiquitous school bell (not really a bell anymore but more of a synthesized clanging one might associate with a diving submarine) keeps them moving throughout the school day with nary a twist of the neck to check out the also ubiquitous clock. In fact, the clocks were regarded more with bemused curiosity, like an Aztec trinket or a shark’s tooth, than as a relevant tool of good order and discipline. One day, in response to my befuddlement at three different showings on three different clocks all within ten feet of each other, a math teacher explained to me that she just “listens for the bell!”
Most school-age kids don’t have jobs and so, consequently, have little need to be “on time” for it. Even favorite TV shows that parents remember as being on such and such day at such and such time (remember “Hawaii Five-O” at 10pm EST Wednesdays?) no longer require time-keeping. Kids can download and watch their shows on their PCs, iPods, TiVos or any of a dozen other such gizmos. Kids DON’T need to know what time it is!
Even as adults, the need for good time-telling skills is on the wane. Once heavily scheduled, parents and worker bees are doing more of their errands and tasks on line or over the phone, or more and more, not at all! Now it seems less and less important to be anywhere on time since nobody seems to know what time it is anyway. During the time I lived in Spain I marveled at how anything was ever accomplished in that country given the Spaniard’s less than punctilious devotion to the clock. But at least I knew the reason for their ways; sun-soaked afternoons, warm breezes, good cheap red wine…they genuinely had nothing to do and no where to go and genuinely had no need for time-keeping.
Americans don’t “pass the potatoes” anymore because they don’t sit down together at the dinner table anymore thus rendering dinner “time” irrelevant. I can’t help feeling a little sad and disappointed that a skill as rudimentary as telling time could fall into such neglect.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Well friends I have been away from the blog-wars for quite some time now. So much has happened in the interim that it would be uber-laborous to capture all that has taken place in the level of detail that would make it interesting to read. That said, I resolve to give you periodic "personal reflections" in which I will share personal highlights.
Please give this blog a chance. I have a lot of things on my mind and I am in a mood to share! What's on my mind? Obama-care, GOP fortunes and mis-fortunes, pop culture, child-raising, Catholic issues/perspectives, pets, etc. Basically, whatever is on my mind when I log in is what I give myself permission to blab - er, blog - about!
For example, at this moment I am watching So You Think Can Dance on FOX and I fully anticipate that I will be impressed and delighted at the high quality entertainment this program provides week in and week out. My jury is still out on the wisdom of adding non-dance industry celebrity guests to the panel of "jedges" but there's no doubting Ellen Degeneres is pretty funny. I guess now that the judges no longer have a real say (contestants advance on the phone-in votes of viewers) the producers feel the need to substitute levity for relevance. I am not really that surprised though since the format and length of the program (and the live audience) are conducive to more variety. Not that the dance isn't enough - it is, in my opinion - but you can't blame the producers for looking for new ways to increase their share. Alright, enough of that.
As I write this, the President is on another network (or several) holding his fifth news conference. I have already made up my mind that whatever health care crisis we may be experiencing - and I am not convinced there is a crisis - is not a matter for the federal government to get its fat hands on. For those of you who think the government can do a better job insuring people than private insurance companies, why stop at health insurance? Why not car insurance? Homeowners insurance? Heck, why stop at insurance? Why not take over every private industry? Seriously, what is the rationale for the government taking over any industry? I'll take your answers off the air!
Okay, that wraps it up for today. Take care, God bless and cheers!
Please give this blog a chance. I have a lot of things on my mind and I am in a mood to share! What's on my mind? Obama-care, GOP fortunes and mis-fortunes, pop culture, child-raising, Catholic issues/perspectives, pets, etc. Basically, whatever is on my mind when I log in is what I give myself permission to blab - er, blog - about!
For example, at this moment I am watching So You Think Can Dance on FOX and I fully anticipate that I will be impressed and delighted at the high quality entertainment this program provides week in and week out. My jury is still out on the wisdom of adding non-dance industry celebrity guests to the panel of "jedges" but there's no doubting Ellen Degeneres is pretty funny. I guess now that the judges no longer have a real say (contestants advance on the phone-in votes of viewers) the producers feel the need to substitute levity for relevance. I am not really that surprised though since the format and length of the program (and the live audience) are conducive to more variety. Not that the dance isn't enough - it is, in my opinion - but you can't blame the producers for looking for new ways to increase their share. Alright, enough of that.
As I write this, the President is on another network (or several) holding his fifth news conference. I have already made up my mind that whatever health care crisis we may be experiencing - and I am not convinced there is a crisis - is not a matter for the federal government to get its fat hands on. For those of you who think the government can do a better job insuring people than private insurance companies, why stop at health insurance? Why not car insurance? Homeowners insurance? Heck, why stop at insurance? Why not take over every private industry? Seriously, what is the rationale for the government taking over any industry? I'll take your answers off the air!
Okay, that wraps it up for today. Take care, God bless and cheers!
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